Strangers
by WolfBane2
Summary: Collection of DNAngel drabbles. Chapter 1: Dark's view of how the police who hunt him have degraded in quality over the centuries. Chapter 2: Musings on the color of Satoshi's hair.
1. Dark Harvest

_"The thief is sorry to be hanged, not to be a thief."  
- Anonymous_

A thief is one who is always pursued, always persecuted for the crimes he commits. Dark did not take offense at his negative role among the stricter citizens who witnessed his raids. He knew it was only right and proper that the attractive bad-boy must outwit those who carried out the laws of the land. It was written in the invisible codes that governed humanity itself. The dashing hero makes his way through his quest, he is met with opposition, perhaps encounters a few intense points where those who support him think that surely even the great Phantom Thief could not escape this trap, and then he slips away, laughing as he vanishes into the shadows with the quest's obtainment in hand. Logic itself nodded that yes, this is in fact the correct order of things. Of course in the Phantom Thief's case, Logic often tended to look the other way, and instead devote its attention to making sure lesser-villains were captured and that soba noodles always made a "splat" sort of noise when they were accidentally dropped by a shaky hand. When he had first been thrust into the human world by a somewhat catastrophic accident, Logic had in fact been out to lunch.

In the early days of his existence in the mortal world, when merciless warriors on massive horses had policed the towns of Japan, they too had hunted the already-legendary Phantom Thief. But they were wiser than their 21st century descendants, for they had pursued him in a slightly different manner. In parties of at least a dozen armed men, they'd head out into the night, some on foot, some on horseback. The husky war-horses would be adorned with bright saddle pads and bridle plumes of purple and gold, and the soldiers who traveled by their own legs carried banners whose colors were so vibrant that they pierced even the murky darkness of the moonless nights. Hunting hounds would mill at the feet of the warriors, baying their pursuit to the stars overhead, and there would always be a trumpeter or two accompanying the hunting parties, so that the entire quest really had more of a festival air than the steady eagerness of a true hunt. Those who instructed the warriors were intelligent enough to realize that the only way the Phantom Thief could be pursued at all was to make the occasion so magnificent that he would be lured to come out and take a look at it.

Of course, Dark was never caught by a conquest such as this, but the soldiers certainly gave it a better try than the policemen of later ages. Those fools pursued him with nets and guns and pathetic ambush squads laying in wait along the path to the artifact. As the centuries progressed, the new policemen began giving chase only to a clever thief (granted, an extraordinarily clever thief, but merely a mortal thief none the less), never in the merry, reverent procedure proper for the hunt of a Phantom. It bored him intensely, as he had little to do during the hours when the sun lit the landscape but dream of his Sacred Maiden and anticipate the upcoming trials of the next thieving mission. Therefore he often was forced to put his excess energy to use in other methods, such as irritating his host every thirty seconds or so on the average day. Daisuke himself would testify to that particular fact.

The darkness didn't really mind, though. Whether his vast reservoir of tricks was needed or not, there would still always be the night. And that was all the darkness really required.

Author's Note: Eh…it's a drabble. That's kind of obvious. I just recently got a piece of hatemail. Apparently someone does not appreciate my valiant Mary-Sue flaming. Therefore I am using this Author's Note as an excuse to recruit more people to flame Mary-Sues. Because there's too many Mary-Sues out there for this particular writer, however irritating she may be, to get them all. So remember, flame a Mary-Sue (defined in next paragraph), make the world a better place. Maybe I'll put up more drabbles up here, but it's more likely I'll forget.

**Mary-Sue: **Female Fanfiction Original Character who is often quite pretty or talented (or both), usually has a mysterious past, often but not always has magical origins, sometimes but not always is enrolled in main characters' school, and ALWAYS has at least one of the main characters of the show in question falling in love with her. In other words, the second most extraordinarily irritating thing you can think of (the first being a tie between WolfBane2 and the way "Ciao" is spelled).


	2. Perfect Blue

_"You aren't immortal. You're just real, real old, there's a difference."  
- Peter S Beagle, "The Folk of the Air"_

It had been blue once. Not the sad, frigid pallor of crusted snow lit by moonlight, but real blue. The blue of a cloudless sky, untouched even by the golden shining of the chariot sun that graced its surface, day after day. That laughing pastel blue, untouchable as the sound of a wind chime heard from far away. Ashen storm clouds could temporarily veil it, night could drape it with her long shawl of black velvet, but after all these deceptions finally dissipated into the heavens, the blue was always there, smugly peering down onto the green and brown earth that might have doubted its return.

No, this color was no longer the endless stretch of azure it might have been, once upon a time. This color held a story of sorrow, a story told in fleeting images and nonsensical words that blended together until the barriers between picture and sound had become entangled in one another. This color was as though someone had managed to chip away a miniscule portion of the sky, its shards falling and spinning endlessly without ever really touching the ground. For no truly aerial fragment could ever make contact with the earth until the world's foundations themselves collapsed and the two areas plummeted into one another, the solid terrain falling up into the heavens, the celestial mirage plunging in a direction it had no prior comprehension of.

These illusional fragments had been caught between the two layers, hanging helplessly in the in-between area for such a length that Time itself eventually lost interest in counting the moments, and had wandered off in search of better things to occupy itself in. They couldn't touch the land beneath them, nor could they go back into the azure stretch above, for the sky had long since healed its fractured patch over, and there was no longer any scar for them to fit themselves back into.

After nonexistent ages that spun themselves into seconds, the shards had slowly frozen over, loneliness and eternal suspension taking their toll at last. The singing blue they had once been comprised of had slowly died, so lost in this place where the stranger Time could have any effect. Their hue had faded to azure shadows, echoes of the vibrant color their spirit had been painted long ago, but that spirit too had receded with the hopelessness of it all. Their coldness, once fresh and playful as new-fallen snow, now calcified until it was the half-hearted bite of years-old ice whose existence had long ago lapsed from lack of newness.

Without purpose, they had been reduced to naught, and no longer saw any point in protesting when they were reshaped again and again into people that appeared different to other mortals, but that the wreckage of sky still knew were all the same. Stretched, slashed, sheared, stretched again, it didn't matter. To these pieces that had once been sky, enough of their former infinite knowledge remained that they knew immediately the different bodies didn't matter, it was still the same broken spirit, circling endlessly but ever lower, like a flying bird that is slowly losing its will to stay airborne.

Gradually, the shards that had once been part of the endless blue began to lose all memory of it. Once, the ice had only been a mask over the true nature of the fragments, but now it had slowly seeped into the character of the blue pieces until it was as much a part of them as they themselves. Every day, the pastel color searched the flagging wisps of memory that slipped away from it in every moment that passed, for something that it seldom and seldomer can recall. How did it come to exist in this strange place, why does it feel like it used to be somewhere else, somewhere far more right than this place it's in now? It knew, a moment ago. But it has forgotten.

Author's Note: Yes. This is a drabble about the color of Satoshi's hair. …Don't look at me like that. I don't even like Satoshi that much. But this just proves that it is possible to become incredibly bored while biking back to one's house from the pool, and therefore to come up with bewildering stupid ideas for fan fiction. And yes, I am aware the quote had nothing to do with the fic at all. …But I liked the quote.


End file.
